


Homecoming

by CountFrogula



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 18:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11856846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountFrogula/pseuds/CountFrogula
Summary: Seija's never had much of a family, mostly because the word makes her uncomfortable. Whatever it is she has instead, she doesn't mind it.(The warning is kind of inaccurate, but I didn't know what else to put; suffice to say they are youkai and therefore do things that might disturb some readers.)





	Homecoming

It had not, Seija reflected, been a good day to be her. Well, fine, at least she was used to that. She was _awake_ , for one, and decided her list of grievances could start there. Her sides and back were sore, to say the least. She was exhausted, and hadn’t had a decent meal in a long, long time.

So really, aside from the injuries, it was like most of her days. She didn’t care for most of her days either.

Blearily, the memories of the day came back to her. It was like any of the other times someone saw her, lately. Being an amanojaku, and all the deception she used to get her way, worked a lot less well when everyone knew her face. Disguises and assumed names only went so far, and more often than not, she ended up chased by a mob, or at least a few enterprising youkai hunters. Or youkai. Just about anyone, really.

She had been slow, this time, and careless. Fatigue, hunger and a growing, numb indifference all came together for that, in the aftermath of her ruined plans for the miracle mallet, and the interminable Gensokyo-wide manhunt for her head. She got caught for it, just about. Some arrows in her back, a slight gash in her side from a spear. She was fleeing into the mountains, too worn out to put up much of a fight; her wounds were already passing into memory by now, youkai resilience being what it was, but they stung all the same.

She’d felt seals flying at her, the stabbing pain of cold metal, shouting, and then… well, then what?

Reluctantly, Seija opened her eyes, if only to demand an explanation. She wouldn’t like it, she was sure, but she could already tell she was lying in a soft bed, and that was strange by itself; she wasn’t used to comfort, and frankly, it put her off.

“Ya finally awake, Seija? Been out all afternoon.”

“What.”

“I said-”

“Heard you the first time. If you can’t let me bleed out, tell me what’s going on.”

Her eyes were open, but not quite cooperative enough to tell her much yet. Her vision wasn’t blurry, exactly. She saw everything perfectly well, but the part of her that would have processed the pictures as much of anything at all seemed to have taken a holiday. She cursed her eyes bitterly and demanded they get back to work; it came out as a hoarse, incoherent croak. She felt a clay mug of freezing cold water being pressed against her lips, and obediently took a sip or two, finally making sense of the world around her.

The voice clicked into place. Familiar, at once cheery and gruff. A mane of shaggy grey hair, and a voice at once gruff and oddly cheery. That strange dress, too, in orange and yellow and splashes of blue and red, that she always thought of as having gone through time backwards; messy enough that it must have had rags somewhere in its ancestry before dragging itself back into good condition.

The cleaver. That was a bit hard to miss, too.

“Ya went an’ got yourself kidnapped. What’d I say about wandering in the wrong parts of the mountain? Askin’ for trouble, it is.”

“…Hey. Been a while.”

Nemuno Sakata, the old mountain hag. Finally, a friendly face, strange as that felt. _Kidnapped._ Well, of course. She would hate to just be taken in, cared for, treated like a fragile sort of thing. She didn’t fool herself entirely, oh no, but this… this was something. It beat owing anyone a favour. Not that she repaid those, but it left a bad taste in her mouth all the same.

She slumped back from her sitting position in the bed, and Nemuno’s hand shot out to catch her.

“…Guess I wasn’t watching where I was going. Getting chased around and all. You uh, know anything about that? They give up once I hit the ground or something?”

Nemuno grinned, and patted the cleaver at her side. …Ah, that wasn’t rust, sure enough. Obvious, really; she’d always taken good care of it. “Smoked and hangin’ in the shed. Give ‘em a couple days in this weather, maybe a week. Weather’s too wet this year,” she tutted disapprovingly.

She didn’t ask after the amanojaku’s injuries, of course. She’d already seen and tended to it all. The bandages and poultices covering her body made Seija feel like her entire body was a single, clumsy, cloth-wrapped club. She knew it wasn’t quite so bad, but her clumsiness from having just woken up wasn’t doing her any favours. She managed a cracked laugh, and a smile. A smile, then a grimace. Being near anyone who was honestly happy to see her had always made her skin crawl. At least it was rare.

Seija glanced at the wall. A little plan of the rambling cottage, build and rebuilt and expanded endlessly over the year to accommodate newcomers. Recently hung up in the room, she could tell, to show her a few easy ways out. Kidnapped only to break out again when she feels like it, after a full recovery. It was the little things like that, she thought, that made it feel like home.

Which was ridiculous, of course. Amanojaku weren’t in the habit of having comfortable homes, seeing as they were always starting trouble or on the run. Family, too, was out of the question. Obviously, they had biological family, but… given how the average amanojaku behaved, combined with their harsh circumstances and sheer paranoia, they didn’t exactly get along. It was best if they stayed apart, for the most part. Left to fend for themselves, and for their own sakes, hopefully never meet.

…It was probably why this still felt so strange. She would never quite get used to it. Probably for the best. The house was still familiar, though, even through a few renovations. She recognized the room she was in, and even remembered who it used to belong to. Moved out? Most likely.

While she was musing on all this, Nemuno had left the room, returning by the time Seija came back to the here and now. She carried a tray with a mug of icy well water, dried out persimmons, and some heavily spiced jerky. Seija eagerly dug in, almost immediately, making some broadly grateful-sounding noises. More than she would do normally, but she could make an exception out here.

It was a better meal than she’d had in months. Of course, most of it, she knew Nemuno wouldn’t serve to the humans staying here. Wouldn’t be right, she said, and Seija had taken her word for it. Their loss, as far as the amanojaku was concerned.

She could hear them through the cottage’s thin walls, probably a few rooms away. The chatter and laughter and occasional shrieks of… if she had to guess, about eight children. She wondered how many of them she would remember from her last visit. The ones she grew up alongside would be adults by now at the very least, but she did stop by now and then.

Little, occasional kidnappings. She let her guard down, once in a while.

“Kids doing alright?” She asked, after finishing the meal. She hadn’t said a word during it. Who could blame her? …Plenty of people if they wanted to, probably, but she needed food more than distractions or their opinion.

“Always,” Nemuno replied confidently, beaming with pride. She took good care of them, Seija knew well enough. “Kouhei left back in June, went to the village to be a carpenter. Remember him?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I think so.” Seija motioned at her own hair, gesturing to make a mess of it. She’d probably beaten that dead horse for too many years, but it was one line of teasing the boy never handled too well, so why let it go?

“Mmhm. Writes sometimes, tells me he’s doing well. Oughta drop by some time, he’d be happy to see you, I’ll bet.”

“I’m, uh… not exactly welcome nowadays. Never was,” Seija corrected her, wincing. Happy to see her? That wasn’t a thought she relished even before the risk of going to the village now. No, she’d give that one a pass. Not worth it just to pay a visit to-

Nemuno had a particular habit, Seija knew. Children who wandered too deep into the mountain would find themselves spirited away, and soon raised as part of their new family, up in this little corner of woodland, hidden from the world and brought into an everchanging collection of young youkai and humans until they were ready to strike out on their own. Kidnapped, more or less, though they had a way of adjusting eventually.

It was, Seija suspected in a more or less academic sense, probably considered immoral, this kidnapping business and stealing lost children away. On the other hand, she didn’t exactly _approve_ of it all that strongly, so surely it couldn’t be that bad, she reasoned. If there was a sort of evil in the world that led to bustling about around the clock to take care of gaggles of loud and demanding children, she was very happy to let just about anyone else have it.

They weren’t family to her, exactly. They were- well, they were exactly like family, or as close as she’d ever have, but the word made her uneasy to think about. So they were little smiles and nods, and familiar phrases, and the little things that made a home. It was close enough.

“Not welcome, eh? Ya been busy out there, Seija?”

The amanojaku offered a little nod, leaning back into her bed with a groan, feeling like her bones were still settling into place. It wasn’t about the scrap that morning, she knew. It was the past few months hitting her like a hammer, all at once, the moment her body knew she could afford it. Nothing was ever so draining as the prospect of easily available rest.

“Always. Did I tell you about the flying castle? Floating upside down, little youkai in a bowl, ring any bells? Or the whole… revolution thing I had going after.”

Nemuno shook her head. “Pulling my leg again?”

“You’d think so, huh? Alright, let’s see, give me a second and I’ll figure out where to start…”

It wasn’t exactly a revolution, Seija knew. That was a glamorous coat of paint on who she really was. If there was any sort of established order, it needed overturning. If there were rules, they needed to be broken. Anything she saw in front of her, she tended to smash apart. She knew that, and she knew that a rare mostly-honest account of the past few months was very far from flattering.

It all felt strange and distant now, dreamlike, when she told it in the home of something more or less like her childhood. Nemuno nodded, and smiled, and exclaimed now and then, listening with keen interest and (despite everything she heard) constant support. She took Seija’s side as a matter of course, and at the end of the story, Seija had a good deal more sympathy and approval than she really knew what to do with. It was awkward, really. Somewhere along the line, she’d ended up promising to tell the children the whole story; Nemuno thought it was all a grand adventure, exactly the sort she had no interest in trying for herself. It would involve too many outsiders, for one.

“So, this bowl girl you mentioned, the tiny one. Ever gonna bring her around so I can see her face? Sounds like ya took a shine to-”

“Last time we met,” Seija answered flatly, “she stuck a needle in me, nearly as long as my forearm.”

“Aw, I’m just teasin’. And anyway, anyone woulda done the same, right?” Seija couldn’t exactly argue that one, so she just laughed. Slowly, Nemuno got to her feet, patting herself down to brush some imaginary dust off, turning her neck this way and that to work some soreness out.

“I gotta check on the garden. Keep an eye on the kids? I’ve been with you an hour or two now.”

“You _know_ I don’t-” Seija began a half-hearted protest that stopped as soon as Nemuno raised a finger, long before any talk of how much they must have missed her. Grumbling, she sat up, grudgingly admitting to herself that she _did_ feel much better by now. “Still got those little beanbags I’d toss around?”

Grinning, Nemuno reached into a wicker basket on a nightstand, and tossed her a few small shapeless lumps of cloth, stuffed with- it’d been a while. Didn’t feel like straw, but Seija wasn’t entirely sure what. Next to it, the biwa that Nemuno had made for her, a little inexpertly, when she took an interest in playing it. Interest that lasted about two weeks, several decades ago, but here it stayed all the same. She should try it again sometime. Of course, she ended up thinking that every time she saw it.

Never mind that. She had what she needed. She’d always had something of a natural advantage for juggling, and tended to fall back on it and her stories whenever the children here needed entertaining; it went without saying that she was one of the older of those who visited regularly, so she usually fell into the role. …Of course, ‘regularly’ meant every few years, more or less at random. Sometimes she thought about working on that. There was never really any hint to stop by more often, but the thought nagged at her all the same. And then she forgot it again.

“…Right, I’ll see what I can do. Catch you in an hour or two?”

“Mmhm. Seija?”

She didn’t answer right away, stopping at the door, stretching and feeling a few too many bones pop in place, before slumping forward a little.

“Yeah?”

“Welcome home.”

She had to smile, even if she didn’t quite catch her own answer. It was good to be back, for a little while.


End file.
